Today is the day to celebrate love, Valentine’s Day. I remember how in elementary school my classmates and I would each have our own brown paper lunch bag somewhere in the classroom, which served as our personal mail box. It was an exciting day to dig into the bag and see all the valentines we received. I do remember some negatives associated with this activity. Choosing the specific valentines was sometimes a tough task. You didn’t want to send the wrong message to certain girls in the class, and you definitely didn’t want to send a mushy card to one of your buddies. Overall it was a fun activity. By the time my three daughters were in elementary school they discontinued the in-class valentines because the teachers were concerned some students wouldn’t get as many cards as others. Oh, well, it was nice thing to do while it lasted.
In a world becoming increasingly dominated by one-night-stands and hookups, and where a lifetime commitment is been replaced by emotionally and physically-driven short term arrangements, true love is rapidly moving towards extinction. Same-sex couples are fighting for the right to get married and opposite-sex couples are avoiding marriage like it’s a terminal disease.
When I observe couples who are happily married, there are different things which impress me: First, Christ is at the center of the relationship. It’s impossible to have a loving relationship without the source of love~”God is love” (1 John 4:8,16). God’s love never fades (1 Chronicles 16:34) and never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8). Other things which impress me about happily married couples include, but aren’t limited to: how they genuinely enjoy one another; their ease in being with one another, without the presence of power struggles and verbal warfare; and the ability to publically display their love without looking like they need to “get a room” at any moment. When you’re with one of partners in this happy marriage, they speak highly of their spouse.
There are many other qualities of happily married couples but those are a few things which immediately come to my mind on this day we celebrate love. Even though I mentioned earlier that true love is rapidly moving towards extinction, that doesn’t have to be your experience and my experience. If we’ll follow God’s blueprint for relationships, instead of trying to live by our own and our culture’s ideas of love, Valentine’s Day can be for us a day of celebration instead of a day of painful regrets.
I need to wrap this up because I get to celebrate this day with my bride. Thirty years ago today we were engaged. It’s going to be a good day!
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